Wednesday, July 2, 2025

patience...

It's another beautiful, mild summer morning.  The kind that is full of promise, well until at least noon, then it will be warm and humid.  I'll take it.  As I've been moving through my morning, I've had  overwhelming thoughts today.  The word slow, it feels like a mantra today.  Slow. 

It's been just over 4 years since I came home to be a homemaker.  It's been such a beautiful transition.  This morning as I flitted around, watering the gardens and grass, harvesting the first blackberries after 2 full years of babying them, fixing breakfasts and starting ice cream for dessert I feel content. 

I feel like I am finally at the spot I've always wanted to be in, I just took the seriously long way around the block to get here. The slow road. 

Even when we are tiny kids going into kindergarten, we are being programmed, our schooling is so much different.  I was watching a beautiful video the other day of children in a Chinese kindergarten, I wished that peace for all children starting on their journey of learning.  They were painting, drawing, weaving, sewing, doing embroidery, cooking, gardening, creating in all manner.  No one was being taught to sit still, there were no circles it was a warm and inviting place full of curiosity.  I was so enthralled I watched it over and over again.  Outside of school that is how my own grands have been raised.  To try things, to enjoy learning at their own pace and with a self driven passion.  It's nothing to find the Dragon using power tools and painting or planting a garden that her mom isn't aware of until it's there. 

Now I have no idea what happens outside of that small snippet of time and it wouldn't have mattered where in the world that video was taken.  It was the beauty of watching the learning and growth. I might have a very different idea of education, if I had been in the space I am in now when my children were young, I am sure that I would not have sent them to public schools.  I would have definitely had free range kids.  

But that isn't what this is about.  I feel, and maybe fear, that we have been completely programmed to be worker bees.  To be productive, to feel comfortable and safe in a 9 - 5 window of time, being told when we can use the restroom, take a break, eat our lunch.  Free thinking and doing things the way that you feel most creative and productive is frowned on.  

I didn't like school.  It brought on strong feelings of control, I felt claustrophobic.  I felt that we were forced to fit into spots that didn't feel natural.  I was that kid that sat there, daydreaming, staring out windows, doodling, being anything but productive. It felt like punishment.  Square peg in a round hole syndrome.

I've spent 4 years unlearning a lifetime of programming.  When to sleep, when to wake, when to do, what to do, who to interact with, who to avoid.  In these four years, I've been solitary for a large part of the time. There have been a handful of friends that I have allowed into my space. A space filled mostly with my sweet Hubs and my pups.  

the center of my world ❤

It's been slow.  

I sleep when tired now, it's not unusual for me to be up in the middle of the night, or taking a quick nap in the afternoon.  I don't live a "schedule and time" philosophy any longer.  I have to work hard to remember what the day of the week is.  Not because I worry about a Monday - Friday schedule so much, but because I don't care.  As long as we remember to put out the trash once a week, I'm good.  Yet, in this midst of not caring, I am busier than I have ever been, and feel my spirit soaring from it all.  I take days of rest, today is one - after a string of days of heavy and intense work, I am weary and plan to sew and/or paint the day away for the most part.  I will still make meals, I still tidied the house, but I am making time for beauty in my spirit and world.  I am going to spend time creating.  I need it.

The days of squeezing in must do's on the "weekends" made life far more stressful.  There was no peace in that, no time for the spirit to recharge, to reconnect with self and earth. 

how cheerful is that?

Sometimes Hubs spends weekend time helping me with projects that are bigger than I can handle alone, like this weekend when we rebuilt our little front bench.  Taking it from worn, broken and tired.  To sturdy and vibrant red. We started it early in the day on Saturday, scrubbing, replacing wood, sanding it and then painting it.  We'd moved it into the garage as the weather was spotty.  Sunshine, rain, sunshine, huge storm.... that was the rhythm of the day.  As we waited out the last two meds of the night for our Beau, we sat in the garage together, talking while painting.  It was priceless time.  I didn't need his help by that time, I cherished and needed his company and the quiet uninterrupted time together. 

see the old tired color in the corner?

We used to do that more when we were younger and I hadn't started working outside our home.  Then as my career choices started to consume our lives, it faded into a blur of exhaustion and disconnection.  Thankfully, while his career has spurts of time where he works stupid long hours and our life is semi on hold, it is rare.  He has a flexibility that I did not have.  For me there was a time that a promise of lunch together never happened.  He would show up with lunch for us and end up eating alone as I worked through that precious time. 

Now, because of the changes, we have lunch together about 98% of the time, we spend our mornings together and evenings belong to us.  As does much of the time during the day, even though he still works full time.  We have flexibility to chat throughout the day, to see each other at odd moments.  My "job" allows me to pause whenever he has a spare moment.  To dip out for an ice cream in the middle of the afternoon or simply pause and enjoy one another's time. 


Slowly, much like the garden grows, life has evolved into something precious.  As I picked the first blackberries this morning in the early morning dew before starting the sprinkler, I couldn't wait to share the bounty with Hubs.  He'd been doubtful we would enjoy any of the harvest. Birds, deer, bunnies, he figured they would enjoy it long before we did.  His reaction to the little basket of berries was priceless. We've watched them for months, from flowers, to hard green baby berries, to soft red, to deep red, to black... it's been slow, it's been calming.  

The lessons we've learned from the garden.  

As I watered this morning, I took note of the changes.  I have so many baby tomatoes, peppers, jalapenos, there are more green beans to pick.  At least in the treetop garden.  I think the neighbor had her yard sprayed for broad leaf weeds on a windy day, all the green beans in the lower area are struggling hard.  The leaves are shriveled, there are no flowers, they are still growing, but painfully. 

first harvest of the season

I don't understand why we feel compelled to spray chemicals around us.  To poison the earth, to destroy.  But that is their choice not mine.  My yard is never going to look like a golf course, for which I am thankful. At night I have the joy of seeing firefly's, although my neighbors yards are missing them.  I have tons of bees of all types buzzing about.  The Japanese beetles are the bane of my garden, but I will silently pick them off my plants in the early hours when they are still and dispose of them in a bucket of soapy water.  They are not native and are destructive to our ecosystem. 

Guess it is kind of like we are programmed to do the things.  We are programmed to want that pristine lawn.  So many things like that are everywhere now... the sadness....

Before the sun ever rises, most days, Hubs and I have already shared some of the richest time of the day.  I will have tended gardens, prepared breakfast, we slowly move through a space that is there to be cherished. 


Taking notes, while wandering in the gardens, of what needs dealt with and making a plan in my head as to when I will take care of it.  I realized that I finally feel complete.  My days are now a mix of have to's (some things are simply a necessity) and want to's.  When I worked full time outside the home, I started to read a book, about taking back the weekend.  I never finished, it was simply depressing.  I knew with the path I had followed that was a fairytale.  My weekends were solely preparation for the week ahead and dealing with issues all weekend.  There was no peace to it, and there was definitely no taking it back. 

Hubs is off this weekend, he has three days off for the third weekend in a row and we are stumped.  We long to go camping (but its HOT with far too great a chance of rain for most of the weekend), we thought about visiting one of our favorite cities, and bum around - but again it's HOT! Who knows after a week spent doing deep cleaning and chores, we might just spend the weekend relaxing and resting. We have that luxury now.  We might not have as much disposable income these days as when I worked outside the home.  We definitely have a richer life.  

Well, as much as I am enjoying pondering and thinking out loud, I think it's time to fix myself a big glass of ice water with lemon and start on the things I want to do.  I might combine sewing and painting.  I can start the painting and do some piecing while it dries?  Sounds like a good idea to me...

Cherish the moments, stop being drawn into some of the ideas that are out there and simply live a good life.  I cannot recommend it enough... 

love and prayers... 

b

patience...

It's another beautiful, mild summer morning.  The kind that is full of promise, well until at least noon, then it will be warm and humid...